William Trevor is truly a Chekhov for our age, and a new collection
of stories from him is always a cause for celebration. These twelve
stories include:
The waiter who divulges his shocking life of crime to his ex-wife.
A woman repeats the story of her parents' unstable marriage after a
horrible tragedy. The schoolgirl who regrets gossiping about the
cuckolded man who tutors her. A middle-aged couple meet in a
theatre bar for a squalid blind date. The disappointed priest who
fears an innocent young girl may run away from home. Two
self-certain sisters visit a newly widowed local woman. And, in the
volume's title story, a middle-age accountant offers his reasons
for ending a love affair.
From these slender moments Trevor creates whole lives, conjuring
up characters marked by bitterness and loss. William Trevor's
graceful prose is a wonder in itself, and as convincing when
inhabiting the mind of a school lunchmaid, an adulterous Irish
country librarian or a murderer on the London streets. And as is
always the case with William Trevor, venom and tragedy are never
far from the still surface of the stories.
At the heart of this stunning collection is Trevor's
characteristic tenderness and unflinching eye for both the
humanizing and dehumanizing aspects of modern urban and rural life.